Puddings are a great social event. When I go out to dinner with a group of friends, it’s the only course where everyone will tend to taste a bit of everyone else’s. If I’m to give you a final tip, it’s that you should always save a little of room for pudding.

The secret of a perfect crème brûlée is never to use coarse demerara sugar. Always use a fine one - you want to get a discreet layer of caramel, not one that is a centimetre thick. There is nothing worse than seeing customers crashing their spoons against a dense layer of caramel. If you’ve only got coarse sugar at home, put it in the blender to make it finer. You can even dust your brûlées with icing sugar as an alternative - this works beautifully as well. It’s important never to over-burn or blacken the caramel, as the last thing you want is to have a thick, bitter caramel set against a nice mellow cream. Apart from worrying about what it’s doing to your teeth, it’s just not good to eat. I recommend you get yourself a blowtorch for use in the kitchen.

Serves 4

350ml double cream
125ml whole milk
1 bunch of fresh mint
6 large eggs
75g caster sugar
4 tbsp fine demerara sugar, for dusting
A handful of strawberries

1 Preheat the oven to 140C/275F/Gas 1. Put the cream and milk into a saucepan, together with the mint. Bring to the boil, then remove from the heat and put to one side to infuse for 2 hours. Whisk the eggs and caster sugar until creamy. Bring the milk back to the boil, then pass through a sieve into the egg mixture. Strain again and divide between four small dishes. Bake for about 40 minutes then remove from the oven. When cool, refrigerate for at least an hour.

2 Just before serving, dust the top of each brûlée with 1 tablespoon of demerara sugar and glaze with a blowtorch. Serve with a few strawberries on top of each brûlée.

Extracted from Kitchen Heaven by Gordon Ramsay, published by Michael Joseph on May 6 at £20, © Optomen Television and Gordon Ramsay, 2004. Food photography © Lis Parsons, 2004, reportage photography © Mark Read and Chris Terry, 2004. Available at the Books First price of £16 plus £1.95 p&p on 0870 160 8080;

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